chapter 20
Girl
THEY'D HAD A talk about bullies at Suraya's old school once. It was
run by one of those passionate young teachers who descended
upon the village starry-eyed and with big plans in their heads and left
a year or two later crumpled and weary and drained. The type who
spoke in ALL CAPS when they were excited about something.
"Bullies are just INSECURE, and taking their INSECURITIES out
on YOU," the teacher had said, practically glowing with enthusiasm
(only two months into her stint, the stars still shone bright in her
eyes). "You must STAND UP to them. And if that doesn't work, you
MUST tell an ADULT so that they can HELP you." Her voice dripped
with sincerity. "You DON'T have to face this ALONE." Then they'd
run through some deeply embarrassing role-playing exercises where
nobody had been quite as invested as the teacher had hoped.
Suraya wasn't sure how much of a difference that teacher had
made. But she figured that she'd had a point about telling an adult.
After all, when you have a problem at school, you raise your hand
and someone comes to help you. And this was the biggest problem
she'd ever faced in her life.
It was time to raise her hand.
It was the hour between dinner and bedtime, and Mama was sitting
at the dining table, piles of exercise books towering in front of her.
Her red pen worked its way busily down page after page, the scratch
of its nib against paper punctuated only by the disapproving click of
her tongue when she came across a particularly silly mistake. For
once, the nightmares kept their distance; the pen stayed a pen, the
books stayed books.
Fortune favors the bold, Pink's voice whispered in her ear, and
she almost wanted to laugh at how strange it was to think of him
now, of all times.
Instead she took a deep breath and walked up to the table.
"Mama?"
"Hmm?" Mama looked up, deep lines of irritation scrunching up
her forehead. The fluorescent light caught the threads of silver
running through her black hair and made them glow. "What is it?"
"I have . . . a problem."
"Hmm." Her mother closed the book she was marking with a soft
thump and peered at her, and Suraya felt her stomach shrink. "What
kind of problem? Is it maths? Your teacher used to tell me you never
concentrated properly in maths. Maybe you need extra classes."
"Umm, no, that's not it." The absolute last thing she wanted to
add to her ever-growing list of reasons her life currently sucked was
more maths. "It's more like . . . a problem with bullies."
"Bullies?" She had Mama's full attention now, and she wasn't
sure that she liked it. She wiped her damp palms on her pajama
pants and tried to avoid Mama's piercing stare. "You mean at that
new school of yours? Who has been bullying you?" The sigh that
followed was loaded with disappointment. "Honestly. Big fancy
school like that, you'd think they'd have better policies in place to
monitor student interaction. . . ."
"It's nobody at school," Suraya said quickly. If Mama got on the
topic of What Schools Should Be Doing to Better Serve Teachers
and Students they would never get anywhere. She watched as
Mama's expression switched from irritation to one of confusion.
"Then who . . ." A look of understanding began to dawn. "You
know," she began in that overly casual way that meant she was
thinking very hard about how to be casual, "girl friendships can be very complicated. There's often an element of competition and
insecurity about it. Girls can be very catty. . . ."
Was she talking about Jing? With a creeping sense of horror,
Suraya realized that she was. "It's not Jing!" she cried, aghast at the
very thought. That Mama would think of frank, funny Jing as a mean
girl! The idea would have made her laugh if she wasn't busy tying
herself up in knots.
"Then what, Suraya?" Mama's brows had snapped back together.
The irritation was back now, and it had bled into her voice, adding a
harsh sharpness to its edges.
Tell her, Suraya, she told herself firmly. You have to tell her.
"I'm being bullied by a ghost," she blurted out.
Mama's eyebrows shot up so high they almost disappeared into
her hairline.
"A . . . ghost?"
Mama didn't believe her. And why should she? You sound
ridiculous.
Suraya couldn't tell anymore whether that was Pink's voice or her
own in her head, and it frightened her. Her heart sank right down to
the very soles of her feet. She wished she could reach out and pluck
the words right out of the air, erase them somehow so that this whole
thing had never happened.
"What kind of ghost?"
The words sent her flying back to her senses. Mama's eyes were
carefully blank, giving away nothing. Was she serious? Was she
making fun? It was hard to tell.
"A . . . a ghost who sometimes looks like a grasshopper?" Her
uncertainty made every sentence come out sounding like a question.
"He says my grandmother gave him to me? After she died?"
Was it her imagination, or did a ripple just pass through Mama's
face, as though a breeze had tweaked the curtain aside, just an
inch?
"Your grandmother," she said. She hadn't moved, but the air
around them suddenly felt thicker, harder to suck in.
"That's . . . that's what he said?" Mama motioned for her to
continue, and she poured out the whole story, from meeting Pink for
the first time when she was five, to Jing's run-in with the bullies, to the nightmares. "He says I won't be rid of him so easily," she said,
rubbing her aching head. "But I don't think I can take much more,
Mama. I'm scared."
The silence was a long one, and each second of it made
Suraya's heart fold into itself, until she thought it might disappear
altogether.
Then from her mother came a long, soft sigh. "A pelesit," she
murmured, as if to herself. "Of course, Ma, up to your usual tricks
even in the end, curse you."
"Tricks? Curse?" Suraya swallowed back a sudden lump that had
appeared in her throat and didn't seem to want to go away.
Mama straightened up in her seat and turned to look at Suraya.
Her gaze was unwavering, and when she spoke, her tone was
serious. "Listen to me, Suraya. Your grandmother had dangerous
ideas and played with dangerous knowledge. This . . . thing that is
bothering you . . . it was not made for good, do you understand? It is
an evil thing, a dark thing."
"Evil?" Suraya frowned. "I don't think Pink's evil, Mama. He just
loves me too much."
"I don't think it's a good idea to depend too much on his love," her
mother said. "Not when all that love is doing is hurting you." Mama
sighed a deep, exhausted sigh, gathering up the exercise books and
stacking them neatly in one corner of the table. "I'm going to get
some help. This requires an expert."
She placed a hand on Suraya's shoulder and bent down to look
her in the eyes. "We will solve this problem," Mama told her. "Don't
worry."
But as she walked back to her room, Suraya did worry. Because
she'd looked back and seen Mama's face. Unguarded, the curtains
had been flung open, the glass cracked from side to side.
Mama was very, very frightened indeed.